


Eidolon

by SirJosephBanksFRS



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 02:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirJosephBanksFRS/pseuds/SirJosephBanksFRS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On board <i>Surprise</i>, as they sail to the River Plate for Jack to hoist his flag at last, following an accident, Stephen suffers an extremely vivid nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eidolon

Very late in the afternoon, having made her way nine tenths down and around the coast of Chile. _Surprise_ was underway, headed around the Straits of Magellan, making for the River Plate for Admiral Aubrey to hoist his flag on the _Implacable_. The last thing Stephen Maturin remembered that afternoon was _Surprise_ making a hard lee lurch when he was mid-step, then nothing below his feet as he fell through the hatch and then there was a snap, pain and blackness: utter blackness.

 

 

He opened his eyes to the brilliance of the drawing room of his and Diana’s house on Half Moon Street in London in the late afternoon. The sun was streaming through brilliantly clean lead crystal windows and every lamp in the room was lit. The walls were bright freshly painted white, the colour of fresh cream in bright sunshine and the satinwood shone. Looking through the doorway into the billiards room, he could see his olive tree, larger than he ever remembered its being, its leaves glossy dark green and the branches covered with tiny cream coloured flowers. Diana was there in a gown he well remembered, a very dark royal blue silk that set off her eyes perfectly and admirably displayed her lovely bosom. Around her waist was a wide black silk sash that accentuated the litheness of her figure. She was wearing the Blue Peter around her neck, dangling just above her décolletage and diamonds from her rivière in her hair and in her ears. She was staggeringly beautiful: her skin more perfectly translucent than he had ever seen it, her silky hair shone like jet in the sun. The silk swished as she crossed the room and arranged the flowers on the table against the wall. The drawing room was crowded with a plethora of tall silver vases containing dozens of white lilies. The swetly overpowering scent hung heavily in the air, the perfume of hundreds of large very long-stemmed white lilies. Diana smiled as she leant forward and immersed her face in them and inhaled their fragrance. Stephen felt a pang in his heart. She was more radiant than he had ever seen her and somehow he had a strong suspicion that she was dead. He believed he vaguely remembered that she had died yet here they were, apparently awaiting guests in a house they lived in six years ago.

"Stephen, I want you to know that I know," Diana said pleasantly and she rustled across the drawing room. Stephen examined the very large looking glass over the fireplace mantle. It was exactly as he remembered it from six years beforehand, down to a nick in the bottom left hand corner. He was surprised to find himself attired in immaculate evening clothes. They were very uncomfortable, especially around his right arm. He tried to loosen the cufflink on his shirt without success. He wondered if they were expecting people and if so, whom? Jagiello and whom else? The side table had a tray of hors d’oeuvres and he took one and ate it. They were toast points with garlic anchovy butter, unctuously delicious and better than he had ever had. He took and ate another and then took a flute of champagne. He took a deep draught and it was so bitter that he nearly choked swallowing it. Maturin put the flute down on the immaculate table linen.

"You know what, dearest soul?" Stephen said, stricken by the fear that she would tell him she knew he was engaged in operations of naval intelligence.

"That you and Aubrey are lovers," Diana said, her expression not changing in the least.

"Why would you think that, my love?"

"Oh, that is so quintessentially you, Stephen, as good as an admission. Any other man would deny or protest or go on the attack and instead you ask me why I would think that."

"So why, my love?" he said, very mildly.

"The way Jack looks at you. I must have been blind when I was alive. I think I always suspected about the two of you and that is why I kept calling him your husband and all that. He looks at you with more tenderness than he ever looked at me and with more than he looks at Sophie. Does she know?"

"No. No one knows," Stephen said, surprised by his admission, surprised by how unperturbed he was.

"I would not think he had it in him, he is so very conservative and strait-laced. So much for the cliché that of a couple of paederasts, one is always a beauty. But you two are not the usual paederasts -- more like a pair of birds that are mated for life. For how long, Stephen? Since when?"

"Since you were in India with Canning." Her eyes became very dark and narrowed. She was angry.

"Before he married Sophie? Oh, ho, that's rich. Why did you pursue me so, Maturin, for so many years? Why on earth did you duel Canning?"

"I love you. I have always loved you, Diana," Stephen said, his heart aching.

"You have always loved me but you spent the majority of the last seventeen years of your life with Jack Aubrey. In bed, are you the man or is he?" Stephen said nothing. "This conversation is just like when I was alive," Diana said. "I say something about Aubrey and you say nothing and act hurt. Now why was that, Stephen? Did you think you were punishing me with your silence because I blackguarded your dearest friend? I don't know what I should have done had I actually known you were lovers. I suppose I should have said more to see your reaction. It could have been droll, to see how defensive you would be towards him, as you are now. Jack was no great artist when it came to the bedroom. You were much better than he. Could you possibly get any pleasure from being with him or is it all about you serving your lord and master?" Tears rose in Stephen's eyes.

"Diana, why are you so habitually cruel to me?" he said very quietly.

"It is almost amusing that you now have the bottom to ask me that because I am dead. It verges on impertinence, taking such notice of my status. You are much less of a coward with me now, Maturin," she said, tossing her head in the manner he remembered so very well. He felt another pang. “Perhaps we may now be even greater friends.”

"I love you so much, joy. The Dear knows that I always loved you."

"You love Jack Aubrey and you have always loved Jack Aubrey. What a bore. I should have forced you to break with him entirely before I married you. I think you would have done it, had I asked at the right moment. Well, I hope the two of you are very happy. But really, who is the man, just out of curiosity? If you tell me then I shall tell you everyone with whom I cuckolded you, if you please."

"I do not please. I do not wish to know," Stephen said and he turned away from her, glancing at himself in the looking glass, surprised at how pained and old he looked.

"My cousin, Cholmondeley the whole time I was living at Woolcombe, Stephen. He had me in my own bed there the day I died. I am sure Sophie suspected. I am also certain she would never breathe a word to anyone. I always thought she would have made a far better wife for you than I did. Jack would have done fine with a coarser, more lively girl and both he and Sophie would have been happier with that arrangement.”

"For all love, please stop, Diana," he said and he turned and took her hand.

"Tell me, is Jack partial to buggering you?"

"No." She laughed.

"He wants it then! Ha, that I should never have guessed."

"We both do," Stephen said, utterly appalled that he would make such an admission to anyone, let alone Diana.

"How very republican," Diana said sarcastically. "He cannot possibly be any good. He cannot possibly give you any pleasure, can he, Stephen? I got precious little out of him, but of course, I was not madly in love with him the way you are. And God knows he has the look of love when he looks at you. Perhaps he tries much harder with you.”

"He is the tenderest and most considerate of lovers," Stephen said, immediately regretting the words and wondering what could possibly be wrong with him. He had never been so loose-lipped in his life, even in his dreams. It was as though he were almost insensibly drunk. He wanted to stop speaking altogether but he seemed to have completely lost all control over his mouth. Every thought he had, he uttered aloud. She scowled at him.

"I never would have guessed that Jack Aubrey had it in him to find love without physical beauty. Not that I did not think he loved you before. He does love you very deeply, just not as much as you love him. Now it all makes sense. You service him."

"No one is servicing anyone," Stephen said, feeling himself go ice cold with rage and his fists clenching. He ground his molars. His right arm ached fiercely and his hands trembled violently with anger. Diana laughed at the expression on his face.

"Why, Stephen, you are angry at me. It only took my being dead and thirteen years of the worst slights I could think of against Jack for you to finally express it. I suppose you are no longer afraid of me. I do not think you shy; you did call out and kill Canning, which, by the way, was no favour to me. Really, I do not know why you did not take the hint when I told you to forget the whole thing. Poor Canning was drunk when he struck you. You could have let it go. All of that subsequent ugliness with Johnson was entirely your fault. Of course, that is ancient history now. Ah, one can be so much more free and honest when one is dead. It is strangely liberating.” She sighed and then looked at him contemptuously.

“Did you think it would improve my opinion of you that you never argued with me, never significantly differed with me on anything that actually mattered, never criticized me in any way? That you never defended Jack to me no matter what I said about him when you obviously loved him more than anything? You were so abject to me, Maturin. It was not endearing at all," she said, shaking her head and he felt hypnotized, watching her diamond earrings swing as her head moved."You love Jack very dearly, more than anyone or anything and yet you are not abject to him. It was all so strange how you would come crawling back to me no matter how much I abused your affections and you thought that was love, but alas, you never bought me a king's ship to sail around the world with you. You never sailed off into the sunset with me for four long years at a time. What if I were the one alive and Jack were dead? Would you find consolation in my arms every night or would it just kill you? I think the latter. I do not think a month of Sundays in bed with me in a life without Jack Aubrey would do as much for you as one night of buggery with him and life without me. I suppose it all worked out for the best, though I would have preferred to have left you permanently than ending up dead under that bridge,” she said bitterly, rearranging the toast points on the tray. Stephen suddenly felt very sick, seeing before his eyes a vision of the bright green coach and four lying dashed to bits below the Maiden-Oscott Bridge, the horror he had worked to push from his mind every waking second for the last two years. His eyes filled with tears and he squeezed them shut and rubbed them very hard.

"This is a dream and I want to wake up now," Stephen said. He pinched himself very hard on his right wrist as he had taught himself to do after Mahón to no avail.

"I am sure you do," Diana said and she laughed coldly, her eyes flashing.

"You are not real and you are not Diana," Stephen said and he started silently praying.

"I am real and I am the only Diana left to you, Stephen. How am I not myself? Because I am dead? Because I speak with a degree of frankness beyond even that which you knew of me in life? Everything I have said is something you believe or you fear to be true. Am I not better than no Diana? I am Diana. I am Diana in every detail, even some you did not remember for years before now. Do come and kiss me, Maturin. I am wearing the Marcillac that you gave me and that you wanted to kill Jack for reeking of when he came back to the _Polychrest_. I did love that bottle of scent. You always were and are so very kind to me and I was and am so beastly to you." She leant forward and he could not stop himself from kissing her, from putting his hands on her waist and laying his face against her clavicle. His heart ached, she was so very real. The scent of her neck at her hairline was exactly as he remembered it. He embraced her, folding her in his arms and kissing her long, graceful neck below one of her perfect pink shell ears, stroking the fine black silky tress away from her neck. Her skin was as soft as rose petals. Every curve of her body was as he had known it over the years. "Come, Maturin. Let us go to my bedroom," she said softly, taking his right hand in both of her hands and pulling him towards the staircase.

"No," he said, very sadly.

"I promise I won't bite, my love." Tears rose in his eyes. "I will be sweet now. I could be sweet to you, remember? In Ireland, I begged you to stay with me and you were the one who chose to leave, Stephen. I never left you if you had not already left me alone first. We can be together here and now, Stephen, one more time. Pray forgive me and come to my bed. Come to my bed and do not leave me this time. Never leave me. Stay as long as you can possibly do so in this place, whatever it is. Stay with me forever, darling Stephen." There were tears in her eyes and Stephen was deeply touched.

"Diana, my love, I have wept so much. I cannot go through any more. I cannot lose you all over again," he said, his own throat constricting with tears.

"What difference does it make if we talk or if we make love? May we not at least make love before we say good-bye this time, Maturin? For old times?"

"It will pain me extremely for something that is not real. Never in life, dearest soul. Pray forgive me, my love," he said and his eyes brimmed with tears. Diana's face flushed with anger.

"What about what **I** want, for once?" Diana said and she grasped his right hand and arm with both her hands and twisted it very hard and the pain was excruciating. She twisted and twisted until tears streamed out of Stephen's eyes and he started weeping aloud from the pain.

"Diana, please, stop; please, stop, I beg you,." Stephen gasped, weeping and he opened his eyes with a start and Jack was standing next to him, next to his tightly bound splinted arm, wiping his face with a damp towel.

"Stephen, are you awake? Do you know where you are? Your arm is broken, Dr. Jacobs just set it. You fell down the hatch. You are in the cabin." They were in the sleeping cabin of _Surprise_ and Stephen was in Jack’s new wider cot.

"How long ago?"

"Four hours ago. He gave you laudanum to set it. Tis a very bad break, he said. Multiple bones around your wrist because you fell on it. Are you in pain now?"

"Jack, I must never have laudanum again. Never. You must swear to me you will never let anyone administer it to me ever again under any circumstance." Jack looked at him not understanding. “Swear to me, Jack. Swear to me right now.”

“Stephen, of course. I had no idea. I shall make a note of it to make sure that any surgeon you ever see knows.” Stephen looked at his face. The sweetest concern showed in Jack’s narrowed blue eyes, his hand gently on Stephen’s shoulder. He lifted it and stroked Stephen’s hair.

“I have the most terrible dreams and I cannot wake myself, even though I know they are dreams. No pain could be worse, Jack. Swear to me.”

“Stephen, I swear I shall never let anyone administer laudanum to you. I am so very sorry, I had no idea of it,” Jack said. “I know what it is to have those dreams after being wounded and they can be dreadful. It seems that is the only time I really relive old engagements, after being wounded. Sometimes, I dream of things that happened long ago and it seems I never forget my mistakes. I still dream of being on the _Java_ , oddly enough, after being wounded in any other engagement."

"Was anyone else hurt?" Stephen said, attempting to sit up. The pain, which took his breath entirely away, made him stop.

"No, not really. Dr. Jacobs hit his head on one of the beams, but he is fine. Just a gash. I am so sorry, Stephen, about your wrist -- damned painful and inconvenient." Stephen looked into Jack’s face, so filled with concern and realized that tears were streaming down his own face.

“Jack, may I have the towel if you please?”

“Poor old Stephen, it must smart dreadfully,” Jack said, giving him the towel and Stephen wiped his face.

“It is the effect of the laudanum. I have not had even a single drop in so very long, in many years. I have read, sure, of the effect that it may have on the dreams of the injured, but I have always associated it with a very deep and dreamless sleep. I suppose I have had more than my share for my lifetime. Amos had no idea of it, of course. I must beg your pardon, Admiral dear, you have far more to think of than me and my habitual mis-steps.”

“Stephen, I should not have made it to get the news to hoist my flag if it were not for you, perhaps a hundred times over. By the way, Dr. Jacobs gave me this for you. He said your fingers were wrapped around it in your fall and that it was a miracle you did not break all of them, you were clutching it so tightly,” Jack said, reaching into his pocket and handing Stephen a gold ring, Diana’s wedding ring which he carried with him always in his waistcoat pocket.

“Jack, would you keep it for me until I am up and about? I have no pocket. Pray put it in a safe place, if you please,” Stephen said, his eyes filling with more tears. He wiped them away.

“Of course. I beg pardon, old Stephen,” Jack said, putting it in his own pocket and buttoning it shut. He took the towel from Stephen and tenderly wiped his forehead, which was perspiring, despite the chilliness of the room.

“Shall we be stopping in Buenos Aires when we get there?”

“I had not thought of it. I am not certain, it depends on the state of the ship. Very probably, I would say.”

“If I might land there, just for an afternoon, I should appreciate it very greatly. I have an errand,” Stephen said. “I very much wish to attend Mass, if it is at all feasible.”

“Certainly, Stephen," Jack said.

“Jack? Pray, what time is it?” Stephen said, looking around at the dimness of the cabin.

“Eight bells in the last dog watch.”

“Might you rest your bulk next to me, if you please? Just for a moment, if you are not too busy?” Jack’s face was suffused with tenderness.

“I shall have Killick bring us some toasted cheese and wine,” Jack said, “as you missed supper and we may sit here companionably,” and then Jack opened the sleeping cabin door. “Killick, there!” Stephen saw Killick’s nose poking in the doorway. “The Doctor and I will be eating in here, so bring the table here.”

“There will be crumbs in the bed and grease stains on your new sheets,” Killick observed sourly. “And no way of washing anything until we have rounded the Horn.”

“Toasted cheese, the claret with the yellow label and some ship’s biscuit, if you please. Bear a hand there. Vultures ain’t in it, I am utterly clemmed.” Jack said, closing the door.

“Jack, I do not wish to sleep alone, if you please,” Stephen said quickly, fixing Jack’s eyes in his.

“But your arm?” Jack said, looking at the massive splint Jacobs had constructed around Stephen’s hand, wrist and arm. Stephen looked at his arm.

“The break is very low and completely immobilized. I might have it bound against my chest, elevated, with a cingulum. I would go so far as to say that tonight I require your company, if you are not otherwise occupied.” Jack looked at Stephen’s near blanched face.

“Stephen, what a fellow you are. Dear friend, I am entirely at your disposal,” Jack said, looking at him and leaned down and forward and kissed him very gently, “subject to the requirements of the service.”

“I could ask no more,” Stephen said, as Jack sat down next to him on the cot.


End file.
